Political Pitch: Voters Prefer Deep-Voiced Candidates

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Could the pitch of Mitt Romney's voice help decide the Republican
presidential nomination? A new study suggests that it might:
According to the research, voters prefer to cast their ballots
for candidates with lower-pitched voices.

The study was conducted in a laboratory with fictional
candidates, so it's not known how important voice pitch is in
real-world elections. But the findings fit with earlier studies
that suggest people do make judgments based on the sound
of a voice.

"An existing body of research shows that low voice pitch in men
and women signals things like social dominance and strength,"
said study researcher Casey Klofstad, a professor of political
science at the University of Miami. "We are essentially able to
confirm that this pans out in the
realm of elections as well."

Political pitch

Klofstad and his colleagues at Duke University in North Carolina
recorded 17 women and 10 men saying, "I urge you to vote for me
this November." They then modified the recordings to create one
high-pitched version of each voice and one low-pitched
version.

Next, the researchers had a sample of 83 undergraduates listen to
the women's recordings and choose which they would vote for out
of each high-pitched and low-pitched pair. Another 89 students
did the same for the male recordings. In a final experiment, 210
participants listened to each recording and rated which out of
each pitch pair sounded stronger and more trustworthy and
competent. [ Quiz:
Bizarre Presidential Elections ]

The results revealed that both men and women who made their
election pitches in, well, lower pitches were more likely to win
— participants voted for the lower-pitched of the pairs at rates
higher than chance. The proportion of votes for lower-pitched
candidates hovered around 60 percent, the researchers reported
today (March 13) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society
B.

The final experiment shed some light on why voters might have
leaned toward deep-voiced speakers. In general, deeper voices
were viewed as stronger, more trustworthy and more competent than
their high-pitched counterparts. There were some gender
differences in this perception. For example, both men and women
thought that lower-voiced women were stronger, more trustworthy
and more competent.

But for male candidates, the gender split was a little different.
Women weren't any more likely to see a lower-pitched
man as strong, competent and trustworthy than they were a
higher-pitched man. But men were.

"They find lower-voiced men to be stronger and more competent,"
Klofstad said.

The reason may be that men are evolutionarily attuned to judge
other men's status, Klofstad said, a remnant of male-to-male
competition.

Real-world consequences

Klofstad and his colleagues don't expect voice pitch to be the
deciding factor in whether
Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum ends up as a presidential
nominee later this year. For one thing, Klofstad said, more
real-world experiments are needed. The researchers also aren't
discounting factors such as issues, the economy and partisanship,
he said. They just want to "add perceptions of human voice onto
the list."

If the results do hold outside the laboratory, they could be a
contributing factor to the dearth of women in politics, Klofstad
said. Women have higher-pitched voices than men on average, so
they could face an uphill battle in being perceived as strong,
trustworthy and electable compared with male opponents.

Klofstad and his colleagues plan to extend their research to
real-world elections.

"While we are free to make our own choices at the polls, our
study suggests that these choices can't be fully understood until
we account for how our biology influences our perceptions," he
said.